Don’t Get Carried Away: The Election Could Still Go to Hell
What are the known-unknowns lurking out there for Kamala Harris?
1. Big Mo’
I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few weeks talking about Kamala Harris’s upside potential and how deftly she’s performed.
Short version: Harris is already the front-runner. By next Thursday—August 29—she could be near her ceiling with a post-convention bounce. There are then two weeks until the first debate—in which there is a reasonable chance that Harris could consolidate her gains by contrasting her youth and vigor with Trump’s age and decrepitude.
A week after that (on September 17) the Fed meets and may well issue the first interest rate cut since COVID—which would create even more economic buoyancy.
That’s the best-case scenario: That by Friday September 20 the one-two-three combo of the Democratic convention, the first debate, and another strong signal that inflation has been defeated will leave Harris with a meaningful lead and only 45 days to go.
So what what could happen to disrupt that nice story?
Throughout the summer of 2020 I kept insisting that the cake was already baked and that the combination of the environment and Biden’s strengths meant that Trump had (at best) a small path to victory and that this pathway could not be expanded.
The first thing to understand about our situation today is that however this cake looks on the outside, on the inside the batter is a gooey mess.
What’s more, the defining feature of this race is that the cake is resistant to baking. The compressed timeline is most important fundamental in the election:
A 100-day election magnifies the impact of events, but in unpredictable ways. We won’t know which events or moments matter most until afterwards.
It also magnifies the importance of momentum, because it is possible that one of the candidates could surf a wave all the way to Election Day.
All of which lessens the efficacy of counter-punching and increases the randomness of outcomes apart from their distribution probabilities.1
That’s the structural side of the campaign. There’s also the strategic side to consider.
Race has long been one of my blind spots. I’ve written about this before.
I’ve also written about how actual, real-deal racism is one of the animating spirits of Donald Trump’s movement.
All of which makes me nervous because I do not have a handle on how the increasingly racialist aspects of Trump’s campaign will play with the electorate. I’d like to tell you that it will not help him. But real talk: I have no idea. Maybe it will resonate with enough of the right voters in the right places to be dispositive.
There’s going to be so much more of this.
And also this:
Maybe this stuff works? Not on you, or me. But maybe it works on enough white dudes in Wisconsin to matter.
Because I will tell you this: The last decade has taught me to never underestimate the power of racism in American politics.
2. Polls
The polls are encouraging, but they are not awesome.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Bulwark to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.